BOOk Two
CHAPTER ONE
DECEMBER 1862
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The word spread fast. Corporal Henry Overstreet passed it on to his platoon as soon as he heard: Two men in Company C froze to death in their tents the night before. The bodies were blue.
The platoon gathered around campfires in the thin morning light, kicking at four inches of early December snow. They shook their heads. They warmed their hands over the flames or cradled them around tin cups of coffee with more heat than flavor.
“Glory be to God,” said Joe Maxwell. “That’s a hell of a thing. What in God’s name happened?” The flaming red of his face reflected both the cold and his temper.
Henry kept his voice level, fitting for a corporal. “They didn’t seal their tent flaps.”
“And they died for it? Men from Maine shouldn’t freeze to death in Virginia.”
Henry met Joe’s gaze. The other man dropped his eyes and muttered, “Glory be to God.”
Henry couldn’t show how nervous the news made him. He resolved to check the men’s tent flaps at night, to make sure they stuffed their rubber blankets into every crevice and gap. He couldn’t mention this to Katie in his next letter. He didn’t know how he could make sense of it. His fingers were too cold to write, anyway.
Captain Clark came down the row of tents, stopping to talk at each knot of men around each fire. A few men saluted but he paid little heed to the formalities. As he spoke, heads nodded slowly. Then he moved on.
“Corporal Overstreet,” Clark said.
“Captain, sir.”
Clark scanned the faces around the fire. Joe Maxwell loomed over the others, his sandy hair poking out from all sides of his kepi cap, the brim drawn low over his eyes even though there was little morning light to shield against. “We march at ten. This is it. The whole army. Twenty extra rounds for each man.”
“Fredericksburg, sir?” Henry asked. The extra cartridges definitely meant a fight. For days they’d heard rumors about an attack on the rebels dug in there. Of course, they’d also heard rumors about attacks on Richmond, or rebel assaults against Washington. But Fredericksburg was the tale they heard most.
“Nobody’s saying. The newspapers say that’s where General Lee has his army, so that seems like a good guess, but it’s a guess.” He nodded and spun on his heel, his officer’s cape billowing behind him.
“Well,” Maxwell said, his eyes following Clark as he moved back up the row of tents. “The secesh can’t complain about us surprising them, can they?” The others grunted their agreement. They assumed their generals weren’t as smart, or as tough, or as daring as the rebel generals. That’s how it had been so far.
“Eat hearty,” Henry said with a small smile. “Easier to carry it in your stomach than in your pack.”
The march took three days. On the third, bugles roused them at three in the morning but the march didn’t start for another two hours, triggering a cascade of grumbles. The regiment stayed together on this march, all the way to the Rappahannock River across from Fredericksburg. The rebels were across, up on the crest of a slope that rose from the town streets. They had a commanding view of the settlement, the river, and the Union Army on the far side. The regiment joined the rest of the Fifth Corps in a muddy field, hard by the house where General Burnside had his headquarters. They stood there for most of the frigid day while the engineers tried to assemble a pontoon bridge across the river and messengers on horseback rushed to Burnside and then rushed away.
Company E stood at ordered arms near the front right of the formation, close to Colonel Ames and Colonel Chamberlain and their aides. For once, Henry could overhear at least something of what was going on. George Young, his sergeant, kept stopping by for news.
“What do you hear?” George asked in the late morning.
“Every time we get the planking on the boats near the other side, that’s when the rebel sharpshooters – they’re hiding in the houses over there – they start picking off the engineers and the whole business falls to pieces.”
“Bad day to be an engineer,” George said.
At mid-day, with little rise in the temperature and no orders to advance, Colonel Chamberlain approached Henry.
“Corporal,” he said. The officer loomed nearly a head above him, his drooping mustache ends expressing a sadness that his eyes confirmed.
“Colonel, sir.” Henry snapped off the best salute he could manage.
Chamberlain nodded absently. “Have the men eat what they have. We’ve no idea how long we’ll be here.”
“Yes, sir. And, sir?” Chamberlain had started to move away but looked back. “May they stand at ease?”
Chamberlain looked around the ranks of blue-clad men who filled the cold soggy field. “I’m afraid not, Corporal. General Burnside wishes us to be ready to march on short notice.” Henry thought he could hear a soldier’s skepticism in Chamberlain’s voice. “Tell them they may ground arms.”
“Thank you, sir.”
At that moment cannons bellowed. “Ours,” Chamberlain said, his eyes flicking over to where cannon smoke was rising. “May they do some good.”
The bombardment went on for hours, cannonballs pulverizing the empty buildings of Fredericksburg, but the Union Army’s attack never launched over the river. Captain Clark ordered the regiment back a mile into night camp. The bridge was built, he said, but the assault would be in the morning.
Henry’s nerves were strung up. Everyone was cold and getting colder but there was nothing for it but to swallow some hardtack and sleep as they could. Henry checked from man to man, reminding each to seal his tent against the night. Joe Maxwell and Teddy Meisner sat on their rubber blankets before a fire that smoldered with damp wood.
“Might as well sleep, fellows,” Henry said. Both nodded but kept their eyes on the low flames. Voices murmured close by. They were tense, all of them. They were afraid. Henry was, too. Tomorrow their war would change from one of misery and discomfort to one of fighting and killing. Henry said good night. They grunted in answer.
Flagg was asleep when Henry slipped into their tent. As he lay down, Henry couldn’t rest. His mind kept turning to the battle to come, the fighting. Through the long day, he had thought mostly about each task before him that minute and then the next one and then the next one until now, when it was time to wait for sleep that would not come. Now his stomach tightened with the idea of gunfire, cannons, raging men tearing and clawing at each other. He wished he was somewhere else. The idea slipped from his mind as he drifted off.
* * * * * *
In the morning, the regiment descended through heavy river fog to the bridge. The rebels still held the high ground across an open plain on the other side of the town. It looked like the generals were going to fling the Union soldiers through the city, then across the plain and up against the Confederate lines. While the regiment waited, Joe Maxwell looked over at Henry with a tight grin. “Sure hope old Burnside has some trick up his sleeve,” he said, “’cause otherwise this looks to be pure murder.”
The attack didn’t start until midday. A Union division that had crossed the bridge during the night started out across the open field. As the blue-clad soldiers neared the rebel lines, fiery streaks erupted from the higher ground. The angry roll of explosions took a second to reach Henry on the safe side of the river. Smoke bloomed from the rebel cannons. The cannonade gouged gaps in the blue lines, finally causing them to melt into the ground. Some patches of blue fell back down the slope, seeking shelter where they could find it. Pure murder it was. Henry felt weak. His skin prickled. How could they march up that hill to die? Would he have to do that?
Another blue line advanced, then sputtered out on the green slope, adding more slashes of blue to the ground. Then another. And another. Nothing, Henry thought, was up Burnside’s sleeve today. Or between his ears. The men in Company E watched with horrified awe. They breathed oaths and took off their caps to scratch their heads. Johnny Baxter’s eyes were
wet.
It was near the end of the short December day that orders came for the Twentieth to cross the bridge. Shells screamed overhead and cannonballs splashed the water around them. Henry felt the air press down when a shell passed close by. Anxious men and horses ducked and weaved on the bridge, making the boats under the planks wobble and sway, threatening to spill them all into the river.
When the regiment reached the town’s battered buildings, the men shed their packs.
“Hey, look,” a man in Company G shouted. He held up a bank note. The men realized there were hundreds of them in the breeze. Henry picked one up. It carried the name of a Virginia bank. The printing was splotchy, some of the words smeared. He showed it to Maxwell, who shrugged. “Worth even less than ours,” he said. Henry stuffed it into his tunic.
A hungry-looking black dog ran to the men, who were crouched behind what must have been the bank building. The dog nuzzled Johnny Baxter urgently. The young soldier placed his rifle on the ground and hugged the dog, whispering to it. Colonel Ames’ shout sliced through the din. Other voices picked up his cry. The soldiers began to move. Baxter shoved the dog toward the pontoon bridge and pointed, shooing him away. The animal, his tail straight down between his legs, stared back. He was shivering.
The regiment, exposed to the Confederate cannons, filtered carefully through the ruined streets. Henry heard a thud and cry behind him. Meisner swiveled to look. “Keep going,” Henry shouted, shoving him forward. Fighting to keep his legs moving, not to turn and sprint for the bridge, he couldn’t understand why they were being sent up the same slope where so many had already died. Didn’t anyone else know that this was suicide?
They broke into the open land just as the sun fell behind the Confederate lines. Grateful for the spreading dark, they advanced a short way before reaching a low ridge, still a hundred yards from the enemy. Even the officers saw that they could advance no further. A few men fired their rifles up the slope but Henry didn’t. He couldn’t see anything to aim at. Word came to settle in for the night.
Without blankets, without overcoats, Henry’s platoon burrowed into the ground to get out of the wind that whistled down the slope. Moans came from the wounded men who lay around them. Some begged for water. Some for their mothers. Some for death. A few for God. Two stretcher-bearers crept past the platoon and knelt next to a fallen soldier.
“Wish they’d take the loud ones,” Joe murmured to Henry. They were hard up against each other, sharing their warmth against the chill that was seeping into their bones. “Jesus. We’re all gonna freeze. Save the rebs a lot of trouble.”
“I know. The South shouldn’t be so damned cold.”
When the stretcher carriers came back, leaning down as much as they could, Henry whispered to them, “Hey. Any of those men dead right there?”
“On the right” came the reply.
Henry crept out in that direction. He found two corpses, one sprawled over the other. He stripped the tunic off the top man. By touch, he found the frigid blood and exploded intestines of the bottom man. He moved on, sliding to his right. Another corpse yielded a blanket and another tunic. A fourth corpse wore an overcoat. Though covered with gore, the coat was too thick to pass up.
Henry crawled back to Joe and shared his haul. When they had covered themselves, they looked out to see Colonel Chamberlain dragging one of the corpses Henry had just plundered. The officer shoved the body to the rim of the shallow swale he occupied with two other men. Then he turned back and started dragging another over.
“Jesus,” Maxwell said, his voice filled with awe and revulsion.
Henry started up over the rim again. Joe’s hand grabbed him. “My turn,” he said, then pushed forward.
They positioned four bodies between the enemy and the dip where they huddled. Other forms moved in the dark, working at the same grim task. Henry covered his face and head with a dead man’s tunic and pushed hard against Joe in spoon position, partly for warmth and partly to affirm that each was still alive. “Sing out if you’re going to roll over,” Henry said, squirming to pull the extra blanket underneath them. The wet soaked through it as they sank into mud. The weakening voices of the wounded still came through the dark, the cold finishing what the enemy had begun.
“Reckon we’ll die here?” Joe said.
“How the hell do I know?” Henry gritted his teeth. He looked longingly over his shoulder, down the slope. Why not crawl back down in the darkness? He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to close his mind off.
When the morning sun sneaked over the trees on the east side of the river, Henry couldn’t tell if he’d been awake or asleep. He rubbed his hands together and twisted his neck. Shots began to sputter from the Confederate lines. Henry reached for his rifle but stayed down. A bullet thumped into one of their corpses. Henry bent his head against Joe’s back to stifle the scream that surged into his chest. They had had no choice, he told himself. Colonel Chamberlain started it. He showed them how to stack the bodies.
After a few minutes, Joe said, “Gotta piss.”
“Downhill.”
Joe twisted around and fumbled with his pants. He leaned back against Henry and began to moan. Henry turned his head and saw the yellow arc.
“Tarnation, Joe. That’ll run right back on us.”
The only response was more moaning. The odor arrived in a few seconds. Henry closed his eyes and told himself it wasn’t the worst thing about the day. He had to piss too.
An hour later, the urine stink was overpowered when a confederate ball struck one of their corpses in the abdomen. A pop and ssssss signaled the escape of gas, which soon enveloped them.
Hour after hour, the regiment lay there. If a blue-coated soldier raised his head, the rebels shot a hole in it. After a while, the Maine boys started to fire their rifles blindly up the slope, twisting awkwardly to load, then poking the barrels between sheltering corpses. It was an act of defiance, not a military maneuver.
By noon, their water gone, their food gone, Joe and Henry no longer paid any heed when enemy bullets thudded into the dead flesh that protected them. It seemed to Henry he could get used to anything. He stopped thinking about getting off that slope. They couldn’t move, or stand. Had the generals forgotten they were out here?
The sun was sinking when the enemy mounted an attack to the right, dozens coming out of their lines to flank the shallow depressions where most of the Twentieth still lay. If the Union boys raised up to meet the attack, the rebels still in their lines would pick them off, quick as a wink. Some fast-thinking soldiers stacked more corpses at the right edge of the swale so a whole platoon had shelter for firing back at the attackers, who quickly withdrew.
Dark brought orders to leave. The men knelt to begin scraping out graves for the dead who had protected them through that long night and day. Henry used his bayonet. Joe favored a wide, flat rock. The wet ground yielded readily. The sound of digging ran down the slope. The graves were shallow, just enough to cover each body with dirt. For head boards, most used the butts of the dead men’s guns. Not knowing the names of the dead, they carved into the wood the number of their New York regiment.
“Duck,” Joe whispered harshly as they finished the fourth burial. Henry flattened against the new grave. A pinkish light washed over him. There was no explosion, no firing. He rolled up onto one shoulder. Light streaked and flashed across the sky, sometimes in wide sheets. “I’ll be damned,” Henry said. He had seen the northern lights before but didn’t know they showed so far south.
“What’s it mean?” Joe asked. Henry could hear emotion in his voice, but didn’t answer. He rolled back and stared upward. The colors made the sky look as bloodthirsty as the men on that slope, but what could one have to do with the other? What did anything mean?
When the lights had finished, the men used the dark to slide down the slope. At the base, they rose to walk. They passed smashed wagons with wheels jutting at odd angles, decapitated draft animals and more dead soldiers. Henry wore the blood-sta
ined overcoat he had borrowed. Joe clutched another man’s blanket around him. They breathed easier when they reached the ruins of the town. At the beginnings of the pontoon bridge, Henry felt the coiled spring in his stomach begin to loosen. Rain started. Dirt had been spread over the bridge planking to muffle their steps.
The regiment did all right. They weren’t cowards. They knew that now. They stayed together. They lost only a few killed, a few more wounded. But the army had lost again. Their minds were filled with the horrors of that slope.
They stopped for the night with neither rations nor shelter. Rain fell. Henry and Joe found tree stumps to sit on. Neither cared to lie down in that rain. They wore out the night on those stumps, sometimes asleep, mostly not. Henry tried to think of Katie but couldn’t bring up anything about her. Not her face. Not her words. He had her letters in a pouch that hung around his neck but he couldn’t take them out in the rain. He had only her name, which he thought over and over in the dark.
From the time they left the slope until the next morning, neither he nor Joe spoke a word.
About the author
After many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, David O. Stewart became a bestselling writer of history and historical fiction. His first novel, The Lincoln Deception, about the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy, was called the best historical novel of 2013 by Bloomberg View.Sequels include The Paris Deception, set at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and The Babe Ruth Deception, which follows Babe’s first two years with the Yankees.
Stewart’s histories explore the writing of the Constitution, the gifts of James Madison, the western expedition and treason trial Aaron Burr, and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. In February 2021, Dutton published Stewart’s George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father.
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